Yelena Safonova

Yelena Safonova was born on 14 June 1956 in Leningrad, the daughter of the famous Soviet actor Vsevolod Safonov and the film director Valeriya Ivanovna Rublyova who worked at Mosfilm.[3]

In the mid-1960s, the family moved to Moscow, where Yelena attended a special secondary school and studied French to an advanced level.[2]

In 1973, she graduated from Moscow Secondary School No. 37.[4]

At her third attempt, she was accepted by the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography to study acting. In between her entrance exams, she earned income as a librarian. After studying at the Film Institute for two years she returned to Leningrad, where she would graduate in 1981 from the Leningrad Institute of Theatre, Music and Cinematography (under Ruben Agamirzyan). In the same year she became an actress at the Komissarzhevskaya Theatre, where she worked for one season. She made her debut in cinema in 1974, in the role of Lyuba in the film Looking for my destiny.

Safonova's first major film role was as Solomiya Krushelnytska in the biographical picture The Return of Butterfly (1983). Safonova became a household name in Russia with the role of the 30-year-old divorcee Olga in the romantic comedy Winter Cherry (1985) by Igor Maslennikov. She acted in another picture by the same director, The Twentieth Century Approaches, which was Maslennikov's last Sherlock Holmes adaptation.

Since 1986, the actress has worked with the Russian film studio Mosfilm. In 1987 Yelena starred opposite Marcello Mastroianni in the romantic drama Dark Eyes by director Nikita Mikhalkov. The film tells the story of a 19th-century married Italian who falls in love with a married Russian woman. For her performance she received the David di Donatello Prize in 1988.

In the 1990 drama Taxi Blues by Pavel Lungin Safonova played Nina, wife of a saxophone player. The film was about the connection between an alcoholic saxophonist and a hard-man taxi driver.

In 1999 Safonova portrayed a teacher who falls in love with a young acting student in Dmitry Meskhiyev's romantic drama Women's Property. Her screen partner was budding actor Konstantin Khabensky. In the same year she played in the thriller film The Admirer by Nikolay Lebedev.

Between 1992 and 1997 she worked in both France and Russia. Since 1997 she has resided in Moscow.